Lachie Murdoch certainly hasn’t wasted time since he returned home last weekend. He’s set up a new company, he turned up at the News Ltd office, and now there’s a big new rumour – that he is going to buy the Nine Network.

That’s the improbable scenario that has been occupying the minds of
staff at the Packer-controlled Network this week. But there’s a variant
to this story that’s also going around Nine – that Lachie and former
Nine CEO, David Gyngell, are going into business together.

There
are all sorts of rumours about what Gyngell might be doing besides
attending parties like John Laws’ recent 70th in Sydney. He’s lunched
with David Leckie, leading to speculation that there’s a job for him in
programming at Seven. But that’s laughed off. Seven can see the
problems Nine is now suffering following the reign of Gyngell.

As
for Lachlan Murdoch buying Nine, there’s the porblem that as a director
of News Corp he would be ruled out of any deal at Nine until the media
laws are changed. He also has a ‘non compete’ agreement with News Corp
that’s worth around $US10 million over two years.